Channel swim to aid children's water safety

A woman is preparing to swim the channel to fundraise for children at risk of drowning in parts of Asia and South America who had never learnt to swim.

Helene Jewell, 50, who lives in Bristol, will be one of a five-person team called The Channel Pirates attempting the English Channel Relay swim.

Funds will go to UK-based charity SwimTayka which runs teaching programmes in countries where swimming was not part of the culture, but the risk of drowning was high.

They are due to set off from Dover on 6 September and take turns to swim for an hour at a time until they reach the French shore.

Ms Jewell said: 'It may be a bit of a midlife crisis but I've swum the River Dart 10k three times and initially I thought I would never be able to swim 10k, then I did it and then again…

"And there's a sense of maybe there's something else I could do."

"I learnt to swim when I was four and I was really lucky. I had a swimming pool near me I could learn to swim, it was all very easy.

"But we're not fish, we don't automatically know how to swim and where there aren't the facilities and resources [for children] to learn to swim, someone needs to step in."

Ms Jewell was participating in SwimTayka training weekends at Dover to prepare for the crossing, with fewer people having swum the channel than have climbed Everest, she said.

Alongside that she was preparing for other difficulties, like avoiding the debris that collects in parts of the channel, and jellyfish, which she said was "a bit of a mind over matter thing," she said.

"But from all the people I've spoken to, sea sickness is the biggest challenge, because you're in a small boat in the middle of the channel and the waves will not be stopping for us.

"The weather's got to be good enough for us to cross the channel but it's not going to be brilliant," she added.

Bryan Avery, founder of SwimTayka said the charity runs programmes teaching local children to swim in "coastal locations like Bali, Peru, and Brazil, where learning to swim simply isn't part of the curriculum, leaving children at high risk of drowning".

Ms Jewell is aiming to raise £1,800 for SwimTayka with her channel swim.

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